Hidden Gems:A Week In the Life

Mobile photography these days is about as normal as carrying around a smartphone. Besides adding a filter and posting to Instagram or Facebook, are there any other things we can do to spice things up a bit?

Today's Hidden Gems is focused on two apps that are not your run-of-the-mill ones for photography. Instead, these are two apps that you likely have not heard of but you should add to your app collection!

Beardify

Beardify (and its sibling apps, Fatify, Oldify and now Baldify) at first blush seem to fall under the novelty app category. However, this app and its related face modifiers deserved more attention because, to be honest, they are hilarious.

Beardify, as the name implies, lets you add a wide assortment of beards to any portrait photo or selfie on your smartphone.What makes Beardify different though from similar apps is two-fold:

The quality of the beards and effect is outstanding

Beardify animates your face with various effects

Simply put, Beardify is one of the best simulation photo apps I have come across. The ability for it to animate your face is also unexpected and fascinating. Seriously, watch our video of me demoing the app to get an idea or just download it yourself and try not to laugh.

Using Beardify is easy. Launch the app, line up the facial features and take a selfie. If you have an older photo you would like to use, just bring that up out of your camera roll. The secret to Beardify is the accuracy in facial recognition. At any point, you can check the alignment and make adjustments to ensure there are no gaps when the beard is added to the photo. The most crucial target point is, of course, chin alignment, so make sure that is right at the curve.

Once you have the photo set up just hit the checkmark and Beardify does the rest. The app then animates you, usually with a yawn or a sighing effect. Now is where the real fun starts! Choose your beard style, including goatee, soul patch, musketeer and your beard color (black, brown, blonde, or white). If something does not fit right, just tap the edit button, and you can precisely move your beard so that the effect is dead on accurate.

If you are happy with your creation, you can then share it using the Universal Share picker on Windows Phone. To save it just to your camera roll (device), just hit the back button after the Share picker launches.

Other options in Beardify include 'Mix', which lets you apply Oldify, Fatify and Baldify effects to your creation and 'Video', which allows you to animate your image. The animations are truly creepy but in a mesmerizing way. Animated effects include burp, sigh, clear throat, yawn and more. Even better, you can save the video clip to your phone or post to social networks!

Do not pass this up!

As I mentioned earlier, Beardify is easy to dismiss as a novelty app. Here is the thing though: you will laugh a lot with this one. The effects are just too good to pass over, and you and your friends will certainly get a good chuckle out of it. Toss in the other apps from Apptly like Oldify, Fatify, and Baldify and it makes it all even better.

Beardify is free to download and use. There is also an optional in-app purchase to unlock even more beards.

Font Candy

In my time with Windows Phone I have come across many apps that add text overlays to images. Font Candy, however, is much different and easily one of the best options now available. The reasons for this conclusion come down to the sheer amount options and the well-done editor to walk you through the process.

When you first launch Font Candy, you are presented with three options for your source image. These are found under 'Getting Started' and include:

Once a photo is chosen you can either square crop it (for Instagram sharing) or leave it as is by using the 'Skip' command.

Now it's time to get into the meat of Font Candy. On the next screen, you can begin adding text by double-tapping on the caption entry area on the photo. Font Candy's strength is in the copious amounts of creative options. However, they are done in such a manner that you do not feel overwhelmed. That is because Font Candy uses a guided process to walk you through the creation process, and you never feel like you are in over your head.

Font Candy Text options include:

Choose from nearly 50 font types

Adjust text size, shadow, character and line spacing, rotation, position and more

Align text right, center, or left

Blend (exclusion, color dodge, linear light, etc.)

All of that was just for the text! We are not done yet!

Once you have the text you want and the way you want it, you can do other things. For example:

Image: blur the actual photo so that the text pops out, adjust brightness, contrast, hue, saturation or add a filter

Once your creation is complete, just tap 'More' to save, share or do 'invert mode' (makes the text the image).

If you find all of this to be too much, just head to the 'Inspiration' area to see how others are using Font Candy, and you can get some new ideas, guaranteed.

Design is Everything

Font Candy has a very simple and elegant layout that makes it fun and easy to use. Font Candy also feels very Windows 10-ready with thin fonts reminiscent of Microsoft's Modern Design Language 2 efforts.

Font Candy is a great app because it is so powerful. Sure, you could just slap a text box on and call it a day, but after using it for a few minutes, you can be creating very professional looking text overlays that unleash your inner artist!

Its Universal, Baby

If you find that you are spending too much time editing images on your phone using Font Candy just hop to your Windows 8.1 tablet or PC. You can do this because there is also a Windows 8.1 version of the app, ideal for those who like to work on a bigger canvas. We love universal apps, and Font Candy gets another bonus for doing the twofer.

Even better? Both apps are free!

Wrapping It Up

Mobile photography has all sorts of different avenues in which to explore your creativity. Sometimes it is super serious, other times it is just to make you laugh and smile.

I hope you find today's app unique, appealing and most of all, entertaining. While other straight-laced 'editor apps' get the brunt of our attention, smaller, more niche creations like this are worth highlighting, especially when they are both of such high caliber. Enjoy!

Day 5 sweepstakes: Win a Canon Rebel T5 camera!

How to Enter: To enter this Hidden Gems sweepstakes for your chance to win a Canon EOS Rebel T5 DSLR, simply watch the video at the top of this page, login to Windows Central, and leave a meaningful comment to this article (if you leave multiple comments only your first will be counted towards the sweepstakes entry). If you don't have an account you can register now for free – it only takes a minute.

The sweepstakes run through the end of June and the winners will be announced in early July. Full Hidden Gems Sweepstakes Rules can be found here. Thanks for participating, and good luck!

Reader comments

Hidden Gems: Photo fun with Beardify and Font Candy

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I just purchased Font Candy to use for Windows and I cannot save the photo! My only options are to share within Microsoft messaging or email which I do not want to set up! My other option is to go back which tells me everything I have worked on will be deleted.

beardify is very amazing application . my foto become very live , and I could attract the attention of my friends with that application . and Font candy is the new definition in photo editing , foto becomes more meaningful.

More seriously, Font Candy is an awesome addition to the WP appspace; I think it would be cool if you could take those pictures and add them to documents in office from your phone? Mobile productivity in a pinch is something I'll always recommend to set WP apart from the sea of consumption devices.

I hadn't heard of Font Candy before but I love the Universal apps and love to support them. I was using Beardify a few times with my brothers and we all were dying laughing checking out each other's pictures. Like you said, it seems like a novelty app but its a pretty fun time, even if only for a little while.

Font Candy looks legit... now I can see how all the bloggers create such eye catching cover photos. I wonder if apps like these eat into Photoshop business similar to google docs eating into MS Office.

with beardify i can just fit beards to my friends with just minor adjustments and then post them in whatsapp group and sit back n watch them go all crazy when most of them dont have one.. i love this app..

Beardify is truly a fun novelty app, along with apps like Fatify from the same developer! Font Candy, on the other hand, is definitely one of the best typography apps we have in the Store! Two hidden gems that are truly worth downloading! :D

Beardify is sure to be a hoot at parties, but what do you do when you're already carrying a beard on your face? Tempted as I was to just my actual beard off and try a few whacky ones on to see if they fit better, I found myself looking for apps to make me 'bald' instead! I know... there's just something about hair and the lack of it, in this case, that got to me.

I tried out Font Candy on my laptop and it looks cool. Obviously I've rarely ever needed to place text into my images, and if that ever is the case i've got Photoshop to go crazy with... :)

Font Candy looks intersting. However, to e quite honest, I personally wouldn't use either of these that often (if at all). Most of the pictures I take, I prefer to leave "pure" (unedited). When I do edit a photo, it's usually just enhancing or cropping. If I send a picture to someone, it's to make them jealous, so I wouldn't add text. Lol

Would have been nice to see photo editing tools. Regardless though, these still look interesting.

I was just checking out the profile pictures of my buddies in WhatsApp, saved it, edited it with Beardify and sent them the beardified version of their profile pic. We were indeed having a great chuckle out of all those humorous animations. It provides better results that look real. Kudos to the developers behind the app. I downloaded Font Candy after reading this article and I have been using it for a while. I like merging famous quotes with images that I feel to be relevant and I have decided to purchase the app.

Beardify, nope. I have a beard. But Font Candy seems particularly useful. Would be great for making quick little Christmas & birthday "cards" using images saved to my phone. And that camera would make the best Christmas gift ever for my mom.

i tried both app the Candy Font and the Beardify they both fantastic. .you can do a lot of stuff with your face in beardify and really makes me laugh. .font cand is perfect for instagram photo's with qoutes. .so loving it

I usually don't like when apps use some 'stylish' font, but Font Candy did it very well. Most apps that do this become very ugly because of it and I wished they just used Segoe, but here's a whole different story: it gets the app the right feeling. It would also be quite ironic if an app that's all about text and fonts would use an awful font in there own app... Bonus: the app also works well! Besides the nice font, that's a good thing to have.

Beardify is totally useless, but it does it's job like a champ. Even my XBox avatar got a beard of it! If you can do facial recognition on an computer generated face (not even realistic), you're really awesome!

I inititally thought Beardify was stupid, but now think that there might be some serious value in terms of the ability to view one's appearance in a different light. Thanks for sharing this app with us.

Photos will always be an important thing in my life, great apps to make them stand out overall font candy, really cool app, been using it for the past month and have done great things with it. thanks WC for always keeping us inform about all W stuffs :)

Thanks for the hidden gems series. Its been interesting to see a variety of apps with different features out there. Hopefully with windows 10 around the corner more apps will make it to windows phone and other windows devices and we can find more hidden gems. :)

Font Candy is actually a very usefull tool. If you want to send powerfull messages to your audience on social media its the perfect way to do it, just put some text with a cool font over your photo, it generates way more traffic than ordinary pictures.

Personally not a fan of Selfies though the Font Candy could be useful. Not only is it for fun as demonstrated in the video but could be used to highlight specific parts of the image for instructions or to clarify something ie an arrow or message explaining a route to take or highlighting something that needs doing on an object and basic instructions.

I love the Font Candy app the best. To be able to add things like saying words and fun stuff to my pictures would be very awesome. The beard app I'm not too excited about, it isn't something I would use much I guess it just isn't me.

Beardify looks fun. Font Candy is definitely a hidden gem and I really enjoyed the tutorial on the many effects that can be done. I can use that for several things. Thank you for sharing. Going to d/l now.

Great apps! We've used one like Beardify, but Beardify is much better looking, especially the 3D aspect of it. My three year old loves adding a moustache to her face. Makes her giggle. Try using the one app, then the other, to give the bearded image a fun title. Thanks for the cool stuff!

Despite the assertions of the staff here, both of these are unfortunately just novelty apps. I looked, used them once, laughed, and then deleted because they're just not all that useful or interesting on a daily basis.

I love all these apps! My one complaint is why not just make one app with all these effects under the same roof? Anyhow, my kids love playing with Baldify, Beadify and Fatify, while I get more practical use out of of Font Candy. BTW, please let me win this camera!!! I love shooting with my 1020 and my point & shoot but I am currently taking a Lightroom workshop and love photography. This would be completely awesome!

couldn't stop laughing when i saw Daniel's face moving while reviewing Beardify.. gonna download it right way. Who says Windows Phone store lacks apps ..well i just found out two great apps for my new Lumia 640xl .

Caution: "Do not show these apps to your kids or someone else's kids or in general any kid because you will have a real hard time taking your phone back from them".

I saw Beardify in the app store and didn't take the time to look at it. I am glad I watched the video and read the article because I will now be downloading it to my phone. Font Candy looks like a well made app and I can't wait to try it out.

I had already downloaded both of these apps but after the review, I have better examples of what these apps are capable of and how easy they are to use.

I would love to win the Canon EOS Rebel T5 DSLR camera mainly because I've been wanting to get back into photography. As a child, my mother gave me her camera from college which eventually broke and that passion disappeared a while ago. Now, as a full-time family man, my time is full of responsibility but there are beautiful things around me everyday that I would like to capture. I believe everyone needs a creative outlet and this would be my way of expressing myself. Dads need to have fun too! I hope I win. Thanks!

As I shot plenty of photos with my Lumia 925, I realize what the Windows Store HAVE A portion Very large great apps for photos! PicsArt is one of the most interesting application for photo editing. Font Candy 's cool! Need to test the Beardify but I see that he is also a great app!

These hidden gems videos remind me how little I use my phone to do useful things. Not that putting a creepy beard on pictures is useful. I could use Font Candy to make animal memes to make my wife laugh though.

Beardify is still a novelty app, but still kind of fun. Font Candy is interesting though just because from time to time it would be nice to add nifty art-type fonts to a photo and share it with friends.

I am old fat and have a beard so i can scratch the first one off my list but Font Candy actually looks pretty neat. Have a s***load of styles and banners to choose from. Like the ability to blur/soften/brighten the images. Might have a use for that app in the future.

OK, Font Candy looks interesting, but Beardify, really? I never got the whole beard craze to begin with, in fact if could do something so I'd never grow facial hair again, I'd love it. But, thanks for the reviews!

NICE!! Let's be honest, the Beardify app is pretty cool, I've used it several times. I like that it's continually being updated, makes us Windows Phone people happy. The Font Candy app is a new one on me, I've just downloaded it, can't wait to try it.

The Beardify app would be fun for my adult son. I would not get much use out of it but the second app I do like. I would use that a LOT. The camera is an excellent prize and I do hope I win. My fave so far!

Man I'm really liking both those apps especially font candy, currently I'm on android but my plan is to get the 640 soon, to keep me till the next flagship is ready, first thing I'll do is Install both these apps, to go with the camera I'll win, since it universal I guess I can install it on my pc, win 10 rocks

i saw the video.. and before putting up a review here i thought of downloading it then commenting on it.... i must say beardify is far much more better than any apps that my friends download from there play stores (Android) it is just awesome.. much more versatile than any other apps.... i would recommened everyone beardify.

Taking about Font Candy.... i am speechless as i am a travel photographer and i always wanted to ad fonts and designs in photographs ... i had to use photoshop and lightroom for it... but now i dont require to go through all of it.... being a travel photographer this app is like a cherry on the pie for me... i just love Font Candy i am gonna suggest all my friends to download it and share it all over my social sites. kudos to Beardify & Font Candy :)